Tapes made public by the BBC reveal that Nixon intervened, for his own political benefit, to sabotage a peace deal which would have ended the Vietnam War in 1968. The war ultimately ended 7 years later in 1975. 1968 was a presidential election year and Nixon was running for office. A taped recording of a conversation by the then President (Lyndon B. Johnson), which took place four days before the election, reveal that LBJ had brokered a Vietnam peace deal. However, Nixon approached South Vietnam and convinced them to not accept the deal. Nixon claimed LBJ’s deal was bad for South Vietnam and that they should hang on and wait for Nixon to become President. Nixon was a Republican and LBJ was a democrat. The majority of the American population thought Vietnam was a mistake and hence tended to be anti-democrat. The democrats ending the war right before the 1968 election would have played badly for Nixon, the Republican nominee. So Nixon sabotaged the peace deals and the war continued for seven more years with countless more American and Vietnam deaths.